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Hard Drive Detection

Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:40 pm
by Kison
Word up, the name's Kison

Anywho,

I just bought a new Seagate hard drive, with 250 Gigabytes of space. I planned on installing it as a slave drive so that I could put any large documents, media files, zips, or anything else on it so that if I ever needed to reinstall my master drive(40 gig Maxtor), I wouldn't have to use CDs or a network.

Anyway, I tried doing just that. I plugged the slave IDE into the drive, the power as well, and told me there was no OS running on my drive. I go into my BIOS, and it tells me that the Seagate(new) drive was the slave, as it should be, but the Maxtor(old) was not detected. I check the cords, they look good, so I reboot. It still can't find it. I tried hooking up the Maxtor by itself again, and realized that even though it has the MASTER plugged into it, it was coming up as SLAVE. Hello? McFly?

I did some other tests. I plugged the Seagate(new one) alone in as master, and it properly showed up as master. The seagate alone in slave comes up properly as slave. The Maxtor alone in master comes up, as I said before, as slave. When the Maxtor is in slave alone, it doesn't show up at all. I tried using a spare IDE cord with similar setups, and they all matched.

Now I really don't know what's going on here. It looks like this is the Maxtor drive's fault, as the Seagate seems to work as it should be. A friend told me to just mess around a bit and eventually it'd get it right. Well I tried different combos for about 2 hours and nothing has been accomplished but adding more confusion into my little brain. Wink Additionally I partitioned the Seagate using a Windows XP SP2 CD and used the NFTP(I think that's it) format before retrying to boot both drives.

Anywho, if anyone knows anything I could try, I'd appreciate it.

-Teh Kison!

Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:47 pm
by a94060
i think that the maxator hardrive may have been shot somehow,maybe my static or any other thing. it only takes 30 volts to kill a hard drvie.

Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:51 pm
by Kison
You suggesting I NOT use it? :) It is about 3 and a half years old...

Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:54 pm
by feyd
It's pushing at about the time frame to die, but that's beside the point.

It may be a jumper issue, make sure both are set to Cable Select and all should generally be fine. Although you may want to consider getting another, new drive to replace it and just start fresh.

Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:57 pm
by a94060
well, how about this. did you try jsut keeping the maxator connected and seeing if you can hear the hard drive a little (i have a very quiet hard drive,but it if you try,you will hear it) if you do hear,its probably dead :x :( If you hear sounds i think that it may probably be working and there is a jumper issuse. make sure you check that.

Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:15 pm
by Kison
I'm not seeing anything on my BIOS(Award) about jumper settings or cable select. I see options for the different IDE drives(master, slave for primary/secondary), just nothing about that. This is, of course, assuming this is a BIOS option.

No sound, my fans are loud enough that I don't really hear anything, and the drive is silent(I've never heard it)

Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:51 pm
by a94060
the jumpers are located on the back of the hard drives. they are little plugs which cover 2 pins for master or 2 pins for slave or 2 pins for cable select.

Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 2:59 pm
by Chris Corbyn
a94060 wrote:the jumpers are located on the back of the hard drives. they are little plugs which cover 2 pins for master or 2 pins for slave or 2 pins for cable select.
Quite a bright young man aren't you ;)

Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:45 pm
by a94060
d11wtq wrote:
a94060 wrote:the jumpers are located on the back of the hard drives. they are little plugs which cover 2 pins for master or 2 pins for slave or 2 pins for cable select.
Quite a bright young man aren't you ;)

im right,right? the "plugs" cover the pins right? im not sure what you all them.

Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:45 pm
by feyd
the "plugs" are called jumpers

Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 3:49 pm
by a94060
haha,i messed it up in my english. but,i guess kision might have recieved his answer and wont tell us. :lol:

Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 4:47 pm
by Kison
Kison tells no one what he wishes to keep silent! :D

I haven't looked yet. Thanks, though, I had a feeling after reading up on google a bit that it was something with the hardware, but couldn't find anything that gave in-depth explanations on what the jumper actually was.

I'll post back once I try it out.

Posted: Thu Mar 16, 2006 6:06 pm
by a94060
the jumper should be right next to the 40 pin IDE plug(if its ide). if its not ide,i dont think there will be one. Right between the IDE cable and the power,you shall find what you are looknig for. 8)

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:06 am
by Kison
Word up, tis me again!

I take it that I'm looking for those 8 pins between the power and the IDE plug? Ok I have that down, but what do I actually DO to change it? They look like 8 pins but there is this little black piece of what I am guessing is plasic that surrounds two of them(Maxtor goes vertical and Seagate goes horizontal), if you even understand what I meant by that(I suck at explaining sometimes). :P

-Kison teh Newb

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:13 am
by feyd